User blog:Fargo84/IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT - The Future of the Wiki
Hello everyone. Today I am here to announce the biggest change to the wiki so far and the biggest that will likely ever affect it. As some of you may have noticed, I have been absent for quite some time here. However, this has not been time wasted. For several months now, I have been working with the heads of the World War II Forums and WW2 Talk on a project called the World War II Open Resource Group. Using the same mediawiki software, WW2.org is essentially a project like ours, yet with many benefits unavailable to us. Thus, I announce the merger between our projects, the WWII Wiki and WW2.org. I have brought this up in private to some editors here and now I make the announcement public. On our years here, Wikia has been a very good host for us. As many of you have undoubtedly noticed however, Wikia has been rebranding itself more as a pop culture hub than a true wiki farm. In the process, we have been somewhat left behind. Most other educational wikis on Wikia have all but died out, leaving us at the end of the line of said wikis. What the WWII Open Resource Group is offering is a new platform for us to work on, one without Wikia's restrictions, forced ads, or pop culture focus. Furthermore, we will have the support of a wide group of people genuinely interested in the study of WWII via both forums. Personally, after working on the wiki for nearly five years, I think that this is the best course of action for us. I bear no hard feelings towards Wikia for any of their changes, I understand that that is simply the direction they wish to go in as a for-profit company. I have seen the steady progress we have made here and I am thankful to have worked with everyone here, but I also sense that our future on Wikia may very well end in stagnation. I believe that in order to achieve our goal of becoming the best source of historical WWII knowledge on the web, we must surround ourselves in a learning environment, one that encourages our pursuit. Perhaps not everyone will agree with this idea, but I urge you to at least read the potential benefits of the opportunity that has shown up at our door. My main point at the end of all of this is that the decision to move must come from YOU. I may have made my decision, but I would hate for it to mean leaving everyone here behind. We have a dedicated team here. I think it would be a true shame if the products of this team's efforts ended up abandoned. I cannot state this enough, please post any opinion or thought you may have regarding the move below, it is critical that we have as much community input as possible. ''' '''Pros * The new wiki is supported by some of the best WWII learning environments on the web and part of the WW2 Network, full of people interested in the subject * We will have total control on what goes on our wiki. We can edit whatever CSS and JS we like as far as customization is concerned. * Ads, if added will be made sure to be kept to a minimum. * We will be a far more credible source of information. At the moment, editors are specifically chosen by admins of the wiki, thus preventing vandalism. Furthermore, our being independent marks us as more reliable and established than other wikis. * The move will not affect how you edit on Wikia. I know that many users here also edit other Wikia projects. That is fine and those other projects along with your account on Wikia will stay the same, the only thing that is changing is how you contribute to this wiki. Cons * The transition will be a lot of work for both admins and editors * Users using Wikia's editor will have to get used to a new kind of editor (should be similar to the source editor) * Certain features will not be the same as they are on Wikia So after reading all of this, if you have made up your mind to go and wish to edit, please say so in the comments of this blog. I highly suggest creating a forums account on WW2F and telling me here the name of your user account so that I may work with you further in moving to the new site. Category:Blog posts